Inconvenience Squared

Sitting on a EasyJet plane last night in Nice’s Côte d’Azur Airport minutes after boarding and the Captain gets on the microphone apologising that due to inclement weather on route, we must wait 55 minutes on the tarmac in Nice because “he needs to free up the gate”. He then invites those who would like to look around the cockpit to pay him a visit when the engines are off.

Kudos for the leader of the ship for addressing the audience and his openness to entertaining the frustrated passengers (quite how that is squared with EU security protocols preventing access to the cockpit is something of a mystery). Yet the obvious thing to ask is why would you ask 170 customers to be inconvenienced to a great extent in boarding a plane that you know is going nowhere for a considerable amount of time? Why couldn’t you move the plane 200 metres to another stand?

Perhaps you don’t care or perhaps the airline’s priority is more important than that of its’ customers comfort? I see the same thing in a number of businesses. Think about the unnecessary inconveniences that you are asking your customers to tolerate for your benefit? What stops you changing your behaviour and applying common sense? Is it a material or immaterial reason (safety or Company Policy)?

Too often our best intentions to manage customers expectations are largely overlooked because we insist on dumb decisions which are clearly not in our clients’ best interests.